#FFXIVHEALERSTRIKE

[LynxDubh]

Didn’t they say there was an ability cap on jobs? How are they going to add a bunch of dps skills that are enough to create a ‘damage rotation’ without also gutting the healing toolkit to make room for them? And if they do then who decides what we lose? Are healers gonna lose a bunch of oGCDs? Lose their gcd heals (most players would absolutely love that lol)?

Like assuming Scholar gets Miasma and a third DoT what do they replace? Protraction? Excogitation? Seraphism? Lustrate? Physick? Honestly I like Protraction but apparently you’re not a ‘real scholar’ if you don’t want it immediately deleted for another gcd dot lol.

To list off a few that could go from endgame spreads:

WHM - Cure I and Aquaveil can be absorbed into Cure II and Divine Benison respectively. Medica converting to Medica II or Cure III is one I've heard as well, but I'm iffy on that one personally.

SCH - See SuperSnow's post above. Also, they could Overwrite Summon Fey with Summon Seraph, it might be a pain for certain macros that let you change your summon glam, but it's an option.

AST - Benefic I, Horoscope, and Synastry (as much as I would personally hate it if this one was lost) could all safely go. And Celestial Opposition could be reworked if needed. I'd hope we'd get buff management back if we were to replace anything on AST though Like Time Dilation and Opposition's old effect.

SGE - Pepsis (the vestigial twin of Emergency Tactics). Other than that SGE is much better on buttons and would only need some tweeks like adding something to make Psyche more interesting.

[OliviaLugria]

Whm: Cure I -> Cure II -> Solace(option, if available). Medica I -> Medica II -> Medica III -> Rapture (optional, if available). Combine Aquaveil + Benison. Remove Plenary Indulgence. Remove Regen. Remove Cure III. Remove Thin Air.

I'm indulging a bit more with removing skills. But this does remove 9 buttons from whitemage. Pvp whitemage use to have regen effects on rapture and Solace so can put those back on to keep that part of the identity. Give targeting to medica series of spells and make them all upfront potency so Cure III's function isn't lost. Increase mp regained from assize to account for thin air loss. Indulgence could be baked into Asylum or Bell or just become a Trait, you're usally only healing once a minute anyways with this fight design.

[Shialan]

So...

What's going on with the healer strike? Did it happen? Do we still wait for it? Give me the tea.

[OliviaLugria]

So...

What's going on with the healer strike? Did it happen? Do we still wait for it? Give me the tea.

Don't know what tea there is to give. We sit here, don't play healer, enjoy the game where we can or leave and play something else.

[ForsakenRoe]

Didn’t they say there was an ability cap on jobs? How are they going to add a bunch of dps skills that are enough to create a ‘damage rotation’ without also gutting the healing toolkit to make room for them? And if they do then who decides what we lose? Are healers gonna lose a bunch of oGCDs? Lose their gcd heals (most players would absolutely love that lol)?

Like assuming Scholar gets Miasma and a third DoT what do they replace? Protraction? Excogitation? Seraphism? Lustrate? Physick? Honestly I like Protraction but apparently you’re not a ‘real scholar’ if you don’t want it immediately deleted for another gcd dot lol.

This point should be a valid point in theory, but it falls apart when we see SE give zero regard to it when it comes to adding new healing buttons. 'The hotbars are too bloated, there's no room for more damage buttons' we say, but SE still manages to give us Seraphism, or Psyche AND Philosophia. There are, as others have mentioned, ways to consolidate some of the less used actions to free up some room. The way I'd do it (shown in this thread yes I'm linking it again), sees the button additions as low as like, 2 or 3 new buttons. But this was written before DT, and the addition of more buttons to our kit (eg I didn't know SE was going to give us Aetherial Shift on WHM):

WHM: Cure1 upgrades to Cure2, Medica1 upgrades to Medica2/3. New action Water/Banish added as a damage button, and a Gauge spender healing move 'Blessing of the Elementals' added. Quake Flood and Tornado added, but replace Glare/Dia/Banish. So we're equal on buttons used. If there's enough room to add something more, I'd add a Lily spender that applies a barrier to the party (Graniteskin/Afflatus Sanctuary), and maybe a single target version (Stoneskin/Afflatus Bastion). At max, my WHM design adds 2 buttons, but it can be as low as '0 added buttons' if we take only the 'damage rotation' part

SCH: Physick upgrades to Adloquium. Emergency Tactics replaced by 'Strategy: Emergency', a 'stance' type action. 'Strategy: Defensive' replaces whichever Strategy is currently active. New actions would be ShadowFlare, Miasma(lysis) and 'Strategy: Offensive'. To save on hotbar space, Ruin 2 could become Miasmalysis, and/or Art of War could become Shadowflare while you're using Strategy: Offensive. Doing so could reduce the 'buttons added' to just one. Bane would also be readded to aid in spreading your DOTs, but as an upgrade to Energy Drain rather than a separate button. Also, having the Fairy summon itself automatically when you swap to the Job could be another 'saved' button, because why the heck would you want to be on SCH and *not* have Lily summoned?

AST: It's hard to say with AST now that they've done the 'card rework' for DT. The idea is the 'least solid' of the four now because of that IMO. At the very least, I'd have Benefic1 upgrade to Benefic2, Helios upgrade to Aspected Helios. Beyond that, Astral/Umbral Draw, Play1/2/3, would be replaced with 'Play Major Arcana, Play Minor Arcana, Redraw, Royal Road'. Drawing cards would be automatic, and a second card of each Arcana set would be stored if the timer 'overcaps'. Cards would be used more often, with a Major being drawn every 30s, and a Minor every 15s. Additionally, Royal Road would consume a Minor Arcana to buff the next played Major Arcana, rather than the HW/SB design of 'burning a Major to buff a Major'. With the removal of Astrodyne, this AST and DT AST would be equal on button count. If I could get one more button to use, I'd spend it on adding a GCD AOE barrier move, 'Aspected Selena', for parity with WHM's ability to apply barriers via Afflatus Sanctuary. Also, can we please do something with Synastry SE?

SGE: An overhaul to how we interact with Kardia, by reworking Krasis and Zoe to behave like Soteria, augmenting Kardia for 4 hits in various ways. Toxikon/Addersting would be reworked to be a 0-100 gauge, and Toxikon itself would be used to enter a 'Hypercharge/Enshroud' window of fast attacks (ending with Pneuma as the finisher). Pneuma's damage portion would replace Toxikon on the bars during this burst window, and the healing portion would be made a separate OGCD (with 900p since Zoe is reworked). For additional buttons, Pankardia would be added at a much lower level (Philosophia isn't it), and two new damage buttons, 'Neuralgia/Myasthenia' would be added. The 'burst window' would be to alternate these actions, Neuralgia and Myasthenia twice each, before finishing with Pneuma. If we need additional button space (I think SGE is quite empty as it is due to Eukrasia), Pepsis could be removed, but I'd prefer to rework that into something interesting if possible. Also, combine Druochole and Taurochole. Total buttons added would be 3, with potential to lower that by combining some actions

In an ideal world IMO, we could also look into ways to increase MP regen via our gameplay (eg the amount we get from Assize, Cards, Aetherflow etc, or having more 'free' casts in our rotation, or having less/no MP cost on filler damage spells (something I'd have on my SGE)), and/or our natural MP regen, and/or the effect Piety has on it, and that'd allow us to consider removing Lucid Dreaming from all of the healers too, saving another button.

What we need SE to do, designwise, is 'minmax' our added buttons. Minimise the amount of additional buttons, but maximise the potential 'effect on our gameplay' that each of those buttons has. The current healer kits are the perfect example of doing the exact opposite of this, IMO. Let's take SGE's additions in DT, and compare them to my asks of WHM (because the button count is the same, at 2). This will sound very egotistical, but bear with me.

Philosophia doesn't really change anything about how we heal. With a 3min CD, it's up so rarely that it's quite easy to just not use it. In the few instances where I do find myself using it (eg Enrage checks, Ion Cannon in M4S, etc), it's cool, but it doesn't change how I was handling that mechanic. If Ion Cannon existed in EW, or heck even in SHB, I would still do what I do now to deal with it. Philosophia is a 'win more' button IMO, where it just reinforces what you were already going to do to handle the mechanic (by increasing the healing of E.Prog by 150p effectively). Then, Psyche. Literally just 'press it on CD', no thought needed, 60s CD so it aligns with burst every time, etc.

By contrast, let's look at what I'm asking for WHM. At max level, Banish would be 370p with a 15s CD, compared to Glare3's 330p. This difference in potency is small enough that casting Glare instead of Banish is going to have zero effect on whether you clear or not. Additionally, because the 'average potency lost per GCD Banish is delayed' is about 6.6p, it allows for the player to purposely hold it, to use it for mobility, turning what would normally be a 330p loss for that 'mobility GCD' into a massive gain comparatively. I'd also change Dia to a 12s duration, such that A: it feels more 'bursty', B: it's used more often (so we have less Glare casts) and C: because it's used more often, that results in more instant-casts in the rotation (aids mobility).

Then, we look at the other button I'd add, Blessing of the Elementals. We add a 0-100 gauge, charged by casting non-Lily spells (healing GCDs charge it much faster). Glare is 1 point, Dia is 1 point each time it deals damage (both on cast and DOT for a total of 5 for its full duration), Banish is 5 points (because of the CD). Overall, this gives an estimated gauge gain of about 55 per minute, assuming you're casting zero 'bad' Healing GCDs. Spending 50 gauge on BOTE has two effects, A: it's a strong AOE healing action, and B: it grants a new gauge element, 'Elemental Petals'. When you have an Elemental Petal, the corresponding action on the hotbar (Glare/Dia/Banish) upgrades to Quake, Tornado, and Flood. The potencies of these Ultimate Elemental spells are balanced such that casting one of each is equal to 4 Glares, effectively making the gauge spender damage neutral. By adding a gauge gain rate to Holy, and making Quake/Flood/Tornado AOE, then we can also increase our 'dungeon trash button count' from one, all the way up to FIVE.

But wait, it gets better! We are all aware of how optimized WHM gameplay has us purposely 'waste' Lilies, so that we can put Misery into the 2min window, right? With this design, the same would be possible with Quake/Tornado/Flood. By wrangling the healing CD rotation correctly, a player would be able to turn their POM window into: POM, Flood, Tornado, Misery, Quake, Glare4, Flood, Tornado, Glare4, Glare4. And the best part is, the only hardcast in that entire window is the Quake, and it can be swapped with any of the Glare4s as needed! But at the same time, that 'optimization', of trying to put these actions in the raidbuff window, would be completely optional, just like how 'put Misery in raidbuffs' is completely optional right now. The difference in potency is so low that it would make no difference in hitting the enrage timer (if it would make/break the check, your party has bigger issues than 'healer didn't do the optimization thing'), and in parties that have few/no raidbuffs (eg VPR SAM MCH BLM) there's nothing to even line those 'refund' actions up with

And this by adding just two buttons to WHM. Two buttons, which can be made 'zero' by consolidating old trash buttons like Cure1 and Medica1 into their stronger counterparts (which we still want to avoid using, but not as much)

Also, in the designs I linked, I made a conscious effort to do something SE doesn't anymore: Make the early game feel like you're getting abilities at a good rate. For example, why does WHM need to get the Lily Gauge at 52? So I added Stoneskin at 30, as soon as you pick up the job. Temperance at 80? Give us Divine Seal, and the '20% increased Magic potency' effect, at 40. Give us a lower potency version of Misery, earlier on in levelling (I figure it'd make for a good level 60 capstone, with Tetra moved lower). Give us Protect as a 60s CD that lets us mit for the party (like AST can with the funny bubble), that upgrades to Plenary Indulgence later. Make the healers feel like they've got something to work with at level 50, rather than backloading so much of their kit

So yeh, whenever someone asks me 'where would we fit the new damage buttons???' I have to laugh a bit, because yeh, with SE's current design path there's not really much room. But that doesn't mean it's not possible with a different design route. We managed to have Bio, Miasma, Shadowflare, Miasma2, Broil AND Bane on Stormblood Scholar, and the game didn't explode. Clearly, something changed since then, and I'd hazard a guess that it's all the extra Healing actions that we don't need thrown at us. Like, I get it, we're 'healers', but can we at least have a better balance? WoW healers have to heal more often, have higher HPS demands placed on them, and they STILL get to have more damage buttons, alongside utility actions like interrupts, dispelling buffs from enemies, CCs like knockbacks/stuns/'incapacitates'

[Shialan]

Don't know what tea there is to give. We sit here, don't play healer, enjoy the game where we can or leave and play something else.

So it's a 900+ pages thread that does not change anything other than make people happy they took part in internet activism.

[Connor]

I do wonder though, if the devs would counter the fact we have healing kits more bloated than a corpse left too long in the water by saying ‘but we increase the healing requirements guys! You totally need these now!’ (The requirements have yet to enter the building lol).

In terms of what gets removed I guess it’s more of a personal preference if anything. If I had to chose two healing abilities on Scholar to go I’d probably say Lustrate and Indomitability. They just don’t really add much of anything to the job anymore, and between things like Emergency Tactics, 90s Deployment / 60s Recitation, it’s not like Scholar wouldn’t still be able to pump super high heal values (or appropriate eHP with Deployment) lol. We even have a heal spam ability with Seraphism if things were desperate. I think taking those two out and replacing them with DoTs would give Scholar more offensive options and put more value in their gcd healing.

It does leave the obvious issue of Aetherflow only applying to 3 abilities; Energy Drain, Excogitation and Sacred Soil. Honestly I think it’d be cool if they reduced Stratagem’s cool-down and made it an Aetherflow skill, which I’m sure they did at one point in PvP, back when Broil restored Aetherflow on hit lol (I think the Feast might still have been there? Obviously with % adjustments as necessary to compensate for higher uptime. I mean, Bards are allowed super high uptime on their crit buff, why can’t Scholars? lol

If what I said is true about fairy abilities that does give them another avenue to explore for ‘adding new abilities’ while getting around any ability amount limits. Maybe they could turn Fey Blessing into Fey Wind while they’re at it? Though, without Indomitability, Blessing might be more valuable too.

Lastly I would like to plead guilty to the Scholar court that I’d rather keep Physick as a ‘fall-back heal’ for triage if all else fails. Maybe they could make it more interesting by having something like casting Physick grants a buff that increases the potency of Embrace for a certain amount of time, or a weak % damage reduction or something. Extra potency on next shield?

[ForsakenRoe]

Lastly I would like to plead guilty to the Scholar court that I’d rather keep Physick as a ‘fall-back heal’ for triage if all else fails. Maybe they could make it more interesting by having something like casting Physick grants a buff that increases the potency of Embrace for a certain amount of time, or a weak % damage reduction or something. Extra potency on next shield?

Of all the buttons on SCH, Physick is the easiest to get rid of, from a maths standpoint. Once we get the level85 trait, Adloquium's barrier is 540p (300p heal, 180% as barrier). Physick is 450p. So all we need to do, is change Adlo's effect to '450p, with 120% as a barrier', and that still results in a 540p barrier. Then, Physick can simply 'upgrade' into Adloquium, wherein it gains the barrier as an 'additional effect'. Adjust the MP cost of Adlo to be equal to Physick too, the 'cost' of the spell is the fact we're spending a GCD on it

I semi-agree on Lustrate, now that we have Excog it's fallen to the wayside, but unlike the Taurochole/Druochole comparison, Excog can't trigger until the target goes below 50% HP. In 'get to Max HP' situations, that criteria could present an issue. Indom is far too important a CD in the SCH kit to remove, if anything it'd make more sense to remove Fey Blessing (or lower Blessing's CD to 30s and then remove Indom I guess)

So if we absolutely cannot add any new keybinds and MUST delete something to make room, the first thing on the chopping block IMO would be to have Physick upgrade into Adlo. For 'adding buttons without adding keybinds', various options include having some way to upgrade Ruin 2 to be Miasma, Art of War into Shadowflare, and upgrade Energy Drain to become Bane (making it AOE and spreading Bio/Miasma). Also, I'd make Bane NOT reset durations, and NOT penalise potencies when spreading, that way, it can be made to also spread Chain Stratagem (now that we have an AOE DOT locked behind it).

There's a lot that can be done with SCH specifically, due to its 'tactical' theme. That is, if SE acknowledges said theme instead of giving us Seraph related stuff. For example, I'd change Dissipation into 'Synchronization Tactics', where instead of deleting the Faerie for 30s, she would instead sync up her actions with yours, causing any spell you cast to be echoed by the faerie, at the faerie's location. This would, when stacked together, be functionally similar to the 20% boost Dissipation currently gives, but when the two of you are split apart, it would allow you to cast spells on party members that would otherwise be out of your effective range (and it doesn't require sacrificing the faerie, so you'd be free to use faerie actions without getting 'locked out')

Or how about a personal favourite (and one that doesn't even require SE to add new buttons!), I'd make Deployment Tactics able to spread Excogitation and Protraction's effects at 50% of their normal potency (Excog would thus be 400p, equal to Indom, and Protraction would increase Max HP by 5%). With the 'Strategies' system I proposed, you'd be able to Recitation, use Excog while in Strategy: Defensive (which modifies Excog to additionally apply a Galvanise effect to the target), then Deploy both the Crit-Excog effect AND the Crit-boosted-Galvanize effect, allowing you to much more easily chain OGCD tools together to mitigate raidwides, thereby fulfilling the 'tactician' identity of the job much more accurately

edit: quick countup of my old design has my SCH at 36 buttons (including all role actions, sprint, potion and LB). If 36 buttons is too many for a job, we could then comfortably remove Summon Faerie (have it auto-summon when you are on the job), Repose (for obvious reasons), Rescue (it is far too latency-unfriendly to be anything more than a gimmick), and have Ruin 2 upgrade to Miasma when in 'Strategy: Offensive'. The potency on Miasma could also be tweaked to 'frontload' more of the potency out of the DOT portion if it were 'combined' with Ruin 2 like that. Those four changes would bring the job to a round 32 buttons which... I don't see the significance in, since my hotbars for SAM are at 33 buttons before considering LB/Pot/Sprint (or 36 with, I have them on a separate bar to the side), my PLD is at 33 too IIRC, so clearly the 'limit' on how many buttons we can have is not something set in stone, and SE constantly goes over the 32 button count themselves. If SE can make a job with 36 binds and 'that's okay', then so can I

[Tigore]

I would also have to agree that Physick would be one of the first on the "chopping block". I do understand why Connor has some doubts for it. At the level 50 range, we may actually run into the scenario where we have no Lustrate and we need to chain spam something equivalent to Cure 2. Since Emergency Tactics is also locked too, I have to either sit for maybe 1.5 seconds of Adlos or alternate Physick with Adlos. Of course today, I never run into that scenario for high levels. The tanks have their short cooldowns by then and creating a mega Adlo shield in between for them is just a snap of the finger for even levels 80 - 100. As for the SMN version of Physick, making it upgrade to the Radiant Aegis carbuncle shield seems most logical. Those 1 - 2K crit heals likely won't be missed for level 100 >.>

As for Fey Blessing, that one could be a combo oGCD action with Indomidability to also save space. While we're at it, the same could happen for Lustrate and Aetherpact too. The fairy gauge basically gets powered by using the Aether cooldowns after all, so it might make sense to have the fairy initiate a team combo from them. This could also be an opportunity to save even more space by applying the fairy combo into Sacred Soil, Excogitation or even Energy Drain. The ones I am looking at are Whispering Dawn (Sacred Soil), single target Fey Illumination with a Deployment spreading option (Excogitation) and the returning Bane (Energy Drain). The potencies would have to be adjusted to fit the balancing of the cooldowns of course.

[OliviaLugria]

So it's a 900+ pages thread that does not change anything other than make people happy they took part in internet activism.

What did you want it to do? The forums are a place to leave feedback. We've gathered and amassed a huge amount of criticism towards healers. It's up to the developers to do something about it.

As for Scholar Kit, I'd remove protraction, physick, and Fey Illumination. I'd make Fey blessing an aoe version of aetherpact. Optional combine of Aetherflow and Energy Drain, Remove Summon Seraph and just have 2 stacks of Consolation on a 1min CD. I'd also probably combine Seraphism and Dissipation.
that's 5 buttons saved with very little loss. but I'd also like a done of other crazy changes not a part of just removing possible bloat.